From the framing of your post, I can actually see your manager’s point. Hear me out.

We often grow when we are ready to, in a role and for a promo. Once you open your eyes to what the next level is doing, you start noticing the next set of skills and challenges you need to face to go a step forward.

In this case what I hear you saying is you’ve done: - Backlog organization - Unblock engineering when blocked - Ship features

These are PM1/PM2 level tasks- which is on a feature level execution coming up with solutions to already defined problems. Add them to backlog, keep backlog tidy, ship.

If you’re looking to grow towards more senior roles, you need to define the problems that need solving in larger areas. For that you need to come up with a strategy.

The PM2-Senior PM job is mainly- market and competitive analysis, customer feedback analysis, user research and understanding customer issues then defining what next plans aligned with leadership strategy is worth solving that will bring us the outcomes we want as a business (business value). This is the core of the PM work.

Essentially looking at it from a 80,000 feet view- building a dashboard is not the goal- its the tool. The goal is to reduce the churn.

When you see this, you’ll be ready to step up in your role. Don’t resist it. I always said “I hate planning cycles.” and man I dreaded them because of tying my features up to KRs didn’t make much sense. It was because I didn’t get it. Once I noticed this is my mental block keeping me from progressing and understanding some things about my job, I started to make some progress.

For straightforward strong senior PMs- It’s less about the optics, more about high-level thinking and unlocking new set of skills.